MTA chief Hemmerdinger gets stop & shop in bus rerouting

By NICHOLAS HIRSHON

|DAILY NEWS WRITER|

Jul 22, 2008 | 9:30 PM

The MTA will reroute another bus past its chairman's family-run shopping mall in Queens, defying a community board's 39-to-1 vote against the switch and marking the second such reroute in just over a year, officials said.

Starting Sept. 1, the Q45 bus - which runs from Jackson Heights to Middle Village - will extend its route about 1.4 miles south to stop at the Shops at Atlas Park in Glendale, co-owned by MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger.

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In July 2007, the MTA diverted the Q54 a few blocks off its old path so it, too, could stop at Atlas Park.

Critics charge Hemmerdinger orchestrated both reroutes to benefit the mall - run by his son, Damon - despite nearby residents' concerns about noise, traffic and pollution.

"This is like sticking it to the people of Glendale," said Gary Giordano, district manager of Community Board 5. "This is a crazy move that is going to hurt [Atlas Park's] goodwill with the community even further."

The board, which plays an advisory role in city government, voted overwhelmingly against the Q45 reroute on June 11.

A month later, on July 11, MTA Bus President Joseph Smith sent a letter to Giordano thanking the board for its input - but announcing the reroute would still go forward.

"The chairman played no role whatsoever in this decision, which we began exploring long before his appointment," Arena said in an e-mail. "We went ahead with it because it makes good sense as transit policy."

In Smith's letter, he defended reroutes past malls as a way to let customers "access these malls and patronize their shops."

Smith also wrote that MTA Bus "would not make this revision if we thought that it did not provide benefits to the public or results in an inconvenience to our customers."

Damon Hemmerdinger, the mall's development director, noted that the MTA dropped its original plan to send the bus to Myrtle Ave. in Ridgewood - six blocks further than Atlas Park.

He said locals preferred the MTA's eventual choice: a shorter route and the Q45 turning around in Atlas Park. "The final route is the route that the community leadership asked for," Hemmerdinger said.